Android users have been waiting patiently for the photo sharing social network to launch on their OS. The noise around its release reached fever pitch at the beginning of last month when it was teased on stage by Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom at SXSW and now the wait is over. The app has launched and seems pretty well made, partially thanks to optimization for ICS devices.

Instagram launched in October 2010 with a dedicated iOS app and has currently surpassed 27 million users, up from just 10 million in September. That number is bound to gain a greater surge now that the majority of Android users have access to the app. It allows users to add a range of different filters to their photos and share them with Instagram’s own social network or to a range of others including Facebook and Twitter.

I’ve taken some time to play around with the app and I’m really enjoying it — I love the different filters and the easy sharing to other social networks. Although there does seem to be some bugs, I’ve seen a couple of force closes on the Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus S. I’m about to head off on a charity hitchhike across Europe and this app has come at the perfect time. Being able to capture the experience and share it with my friends back home while giving the photos that Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid feel will really relay my experience to them.

You can grab the app from the Play Store right now for devices running Android 2.2 and higher. The app is free and right now reviews are generally positive, but there are definitely some complaints out there. One of the prominent complaints so far is that the app is not able to save images to the SD card. We’ll see what happens over time. It’s likely that this app will be popular and that it’ll be getting more than a bit of care from the developer.